15 years of Xdebug

London, UK

Tuesday, May 9th 2017, 14:00 BST

This article was going to be about some upcoming features in the 2.6 release. Or rather, I was hoping to announce at least a beta release of Xdebug 2.6. Unfortunately, I couldn't find enough time to work on all the issues that I wanted, although I've made a little progress.

What I can write about, is a little mystery. About 3 weeks ago, I got a mysterious invitation to meet up with James Titcumb, right outside my (and James's!) favourite whisky shop in London. And that I must bring some carrying capacity:

At that time I had had put together that with Xdebug's 15th anniversary looming, and me having an Amazon wishlist full of whisky, James would be kind enough to buy me something less "standard".

I however had not quite expected what actually happened. During the day of meeting, I saw some tweets going on about a little (secret) fundraiser. Apparently I wasn't to know, but it is difficult to keep things a secret I suppose. In any case, because I had thought it'd have something to do with meeting James later that day, I didn't really read much of it, as it would likely spoil a surprise.

And what a surprise it was!

So I show up at 5, and there is James with his phone trying to figure out how Periscope works. We go in and the manager, has a story to tell about 8 quite amazing whiskies, which I then get to take home. With amazing, I mean, amazing and special and rare whiskies from closed down distilleries, and a few more approachable whiskies. I quickly realized that they are not, erm, cheap either:

So yeah, after borrowing a suitcase I managed to get these great bottles home, and while doing so, James explains what hat happened. PHP's "godfather", Cal Evans, had originally intended to raise money to buy the most expensive bottle from his local whisk(e)y shop - at 4699 USD. James (luckily) managed to convince him that in the whisky world, price doesn't always equal quality. There is a bit of a limit at perhaps £125 for "normal" bottles, but of course quite a bit more for "rare" whiskies. They managed to raise slightly more, through the generous donation of many people and companies that find Xdebug useful. I saw the list, and there were many lovely messages in there as well, a few of them I am including here:

"XDebug is hugely important for our team. Thank you for all you have done!"

"var_dump($scotch);"

"Thanks Derick! Such a critical part of day-to-day PHP dev life =)"

"Xdebug has helped me solving numerous bugs, thanks!"

"Because every good developer knows that great code begins with great debugging tools!"

"xdebug helps me to not drink... ashnazg"

"Thank you for your efforts in the community!"

"Xdebug has made my development life immeasurably easier over the last 15 years. Here's to the next 15, and a massive thank you! :-)"

"For one of the most used and usefully tools in a professionals day to day live beside a good editor."

"It's people like you that make this such an amazing community! Thank you for giving yourself so freely for so long!"

"I can barely remember what coding was like before discovering XDebug. Thank you Derick for making our lives easier!"